Vörhingen Couple Sentenced For Ordering Amphetamines

A couple from Vörhingen was sentenced for ordering amphetamines five times from a dark net marketplace. However, the couple received only two mails since law enforcement authorities managed to intercept the other packages.

The Neu-Ulm District Court sentenced both the 38-year-old man and his 36-year-old wife to probation. According to the Chairman of Schöffengerichts, both persons admitted their crimes. The wife said they were really stressed out by their jobs, that’s why they used the drug. Also, she added that they have seen the stimulating effects of speed in a TV show.

After postal authorities seized the suspicious mails, they alerted police who then performed a house a search on the couple’s home address in January. Soon after they were detained, the man lost his job because of his offenses. They both agreed to go on drug counseling and both went through drug screenings on their own expenses.

The husband was sentenced to 15 months and the wife to 11 months, both on probation.

There were plenty of dark net related drug busts in Germany, lately. It is not a common practice to arrest “small time users” who order their substances from dark web marketplaces. However, when authorities arrested German dark net vendor Chemical Love in April, they not only arrested the vendor group (five men were involved), but they went after their customers and carried out a nationwide raid arresting 63 suspects.

After the disastrous Münich shooting, which led to the death of nine victims and the shooter, law enforcement authorities turned a major focus on cracking down all kinds of dark web activities. The Münich shooting can be connected to the dark net since the attacker allegedly bought the 9mm Glock 17 gun from a dark web vendor.

The two major agencies in Germany, the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) and the BND (Federal Intelligence Service), asked for a serious budget raise in September from the German government to tackle cybercrime. The funding of the two law enforcement agencies could grow by 12 and 18 percent in 2017. The plan includes the mass surveillance of citizens and the hack of encrypted communication services.

“Encryption means that of the more than 70 available communication services … only less than 10 can be gathered and the content read,” the budget plan said.

According to the BND, they want to set up “Panos”, a new project aiming at the weakness of encrypted messaging apps, and the exploitation of those in order to decrypt communications. Also, both agencies will use the extra money to hire experts from external companies and service providers.

The German government’s war against the dark web seems to be quite successful. In the past two months, there hasn’t been a week when there weren’t any dark net related arrests. The most recent was a 25-year-old man from Norderstedt who is suspected of running a vendor shop on a dark net marketplace. During his house search, police found 1,500 ecstasy pills, 350g “amphetamine-containing-substances,” and 100g cannabis. He also had several taser devices disguised as flashlights.